This week, I have been contending with some confusing and conflicts feelings that have made me re-evaluate everything I ever thought that I knew about myself and a certain relationship that I hold dear to my heart.

I am, of course, talking about my ‘love-hate’, ‘on-off’, ‘will they?/won’t they?’ ongoing saga with my dishwasher. When I first met my dishwasher, it was love at first sight. I couldn’t take my eyes off it: all sleek lines, shiny, inviting, and enticing. Our relationship blossomed as and my dependency on it increased. I learned to love its ability to clean all of the dishes with reliable efficiency...and I soon began to realise that maybe I had found the one: it was gorgeous and it could clean. If it had been able to cook, I would have probably popped the question there and then. But I didn’t, I became complacent, I took it for granted and didn’t give it the love and care that it deserved, and last Sunday I realised what a mistake this was.

On Sunday evening, as I walked into the kitchen, I heard a weird squelching noise coming from under the floorboards in the living room. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but with extensive prodding of the entire floorspace of my living room, I eventually found a couple of other areas that had the squelch, and eventually was able to coax one of these patches to produce a trickle of water in the crack between the floor and the skirting. The next morning, the guy who laid my floor came to rip it up, and...long story short, the entire floor was flooded, the concrete saturated, so I now have no floorboards and 3 de-humidifiers, 2 heaters and a MASSIVE fan drying out the exposed concrete while the insurance company decides whether or not to completely drill up the sodden concrete and re-lay it. Not cool.

Mid-way through this process we discovered where the offending leak was emanating from, but I’m sure you’ve guessed that by now. I can’t believe that my dishwasher could do this to me, I feel
cheated. I can’t stand to be in the same room as it, but I can’t cope without it. I’m having to wash-up by hand, which feels like a poor substitute to all of those sepia-toned memories I have of filling and emptying the dishwasher with the help of a singing troupe of birds, badgers and rabbits, while spending the intervening time skipping through fields of lavender.

So what do I do? Do I forgive (and fix) my dishwasher, and admit that I haven’t taken enough care of it, and remember everything that it has done for me...or do I sling it on the scrapheap for being a deceitful hussy?

Hello hello hello.

Well, as I said last week, my most important job this week was trying to successfully navigate through a 3hr exam on Software Development with Java. As I explained last week, I had been reduced to a bit of a cram as a result of lax preparation, but all in all it went pretty well, so I’m pleased.

I have also agreed to do some Physics tutoring for a GCSE student (who my mum knows). I’ve had to crack open one of the new textbooks, and read-through it to remind myself of some of the stuff that used to be second nature. Luckily, it all came back pretty quickly, and means that I won’t struggle as much to answer obscure questions such as ‘why is the sky blue’, and ‘why shouldn’t you sunbathe in space’ (apart from the very real risk of being leched over by nearby aliens).

This weekend I very nearly got talked into doing an impromptu marathon. The Beachy Head marathon starts just down the road from my house, so I almost caved into peer pressure from Todd, James and Sam to pitch up and give it a crack, despite me never having run longer than about 25km before (a marathon of course being 42km), and despite it being one of the hilliest races in the country, and despite the fact that I haven’t done any proper training for over 6 weeks. Anyway, it turned out that I couldn’t get an entry, and I couldn’t find anyone to hand me water/gels at any point on the course (the race doesn’t have drinks stations so you need a partner in crime), so in the end I scabbed off and just ran 1hr in the evening along the sand instead! Poor effort Freeman!

Our dear old James left us this weekend to visit some school-mates in Birmingham. I had a double whammy of relief this morning when he called: firstly because it meant he was safe, since Southern lambs like ourselves don’t always fare too well in anywhere north of London (the accents, the weather and the proliferation of ‘Morrisons’ make us nervous). Secondly, he told me that he was on the way back from the residence of a lady-friend he had made, which meant the end of 10 months of moaning and whinging about how he was a failure and embarrassment to the male gender (which I wholeheartedly agreed with I must say). Anyway, in celebration of this momentous (!) occasion, Sam, Drew and I have spent today preparing a ridiculously over-the-top, hopefully embarrassing and definitely public celebration of his new found virility and promiscuity (involving massive banners, about 100 balloons, party poppers, music and cake). Poor thing won’t know what’s going on, but we’ll just be enjoying an opportunity to tease him for being so chronically unlucky/rubbish in ‘love’.

Anyway, these banners aren’t going to hang themselves (by the side of the road where everyone will be able to see them), so I’ll be off.

Ah crikey, what have I been up to that would be in any way interesting to an occasional peruser of my blog...hmm...probably not much, dare I say it.

Over the last few days my main focus has been on getting myself properly up to speed with one of my Open Uni modules, for which I have a 3hr exam on Tuesday. About 2 months ago I was well in control of this, but unfortunately I don’t like to mix hangovers with academic endeavour (in fact I don’t like to mix hangovers with very much at all, except fried food, my duvet and the O.C. boxset), and as I have spent more days with hangovers than without, my preparation for this relatively important exam took somewhat of a hit, hence the cramming.

I have also been cracking on with bits and bobs of training. I had a meeting with Glenn last week, where I explained that right now I was enjoying doing a run of an unspecified duration (somewhere between 30 and 50mins I reckon) on most days of the week, but that he would struggle to get me doing any more at this stage. Fortunately, he said that he wouldn’t want me doing much different from that anyway for the next few weeks, so I’m just cracking on doing what I want to do, which is refreshing.

The house has been a bit hectic, with poor James at various stages of death-by-flu, Sam still decidedly homeless, sleeping wherever he can find a flat surface (our lounge floor, one of our beds etc), and a multitude of visitors just generally finding it novel that I’m not either training, eating, sleeping or passed out on the sofa all day (as is usual when I’m training hard).

And to be quite honest, that’s about it! You’ll have to bear with me while I do nothing of interest triathlon-wise...but it’s a necessary evil!

Well, alas, I wish I could let you all know that my excess fast-food jiggle-belly has been replaced since I last blogged with a ripped 8-pack torso of hunk-ish awesomeness. Unfortunately, my legs are just a little hairier and my jeans a little tighter, but who cares, it’s only October!

In fact, I have had a relatively eventful time of it, including *GASP* a bit of training, but more of that later. The main event has been, of course, the marriage of my main man Will Clarke to Clare. The wedding was affirmingly lovely, the drinking was predictably hard (we had drained the bar’s supplies of rum and vodka by 7pm), and the partying was sufficiently raucous to make the whole business of remembering how to tie a tie worthwhile. (NB. poor Will and Clare weren’t able to go on their honeymoon because Will had to go into surgery to remove a golf-ball sized abscess from an infected bike crash wound, and they’re going to be stuck in the UK for about a month until he’s fit to travel...if you want photos visit his website at www.will-clarke.com). Either side of this I spent an awesome weekend with my older sister Henny and her new hubby Jon, Jon’s sister Lara and her boyfriend Ali, and the best man Andy. We sampled some of the Cambridge nightlife as well as seeing a bit of the town. I actually had a very surreal experience revisiting Clare College on the Monday (which is the college of Cambridge Uni that I got my place for), where all the first years were having their Matriculation photos...it could have (or could) be me at some point!

Apart from that, being a non-athlete has remained high on my agenda. I have been continuing to sample the splendiferous cornucopia of people, locations and drinks with which the average young person of Eastbourne/Brighton finds solace of a Friday (or Saturday, Sunday, Monday etc etc) night. I have found my formula, which involves excessive cider and rum, embarrassing myself, eating a suspicious burger (not ALWAYS a euphemism) and then waking up the next morning saying ‘never again’. Rinse and repeat.

However, for the good of myself (and probably mankind), I have come to that inevitable stage where the novelty is wearing off, and I have realised that I would quite like to be able to walk to Tescos without having to take a tactical recovery stop on the bench outside the bookshop. I have actually run most days in the last fortnight, though the focal point of the runs has normally been rolling down (like sausage rolls, not forward rolls, I’m not THAT crazy) the Wish Tower hill with Sam, and then racing to the Bandstand. I’m telling myself that its doing wonders for my balance and proprioception, but we’re really doing it because it’s pretty funny trying to even attempted staying in a straight line when you’re that dizzy. I have also discovered the fun of doing ‘Night-Time Beach at Low-Tide Running’, which is pretty much what it sounds like, when the tide is so low that you can run on the flat sand for miles. The only pitfall (which is also what makes it fun) is that the wet shiny sand conceals the odd pool or sandbar, so an acceptance of occasionally falling headfirst into unforeseen salty water has to be made.

Anyway, aside from acting like an idiot (which most of this blog seems to have revealed), I have also been doing some boring stuff like revising for an imminent OU exam (Software Development with Java – wooo!) and having to disagree with various disagreeable suggestions from British Triathlon, but most of that stuff is tedious and all of it is unworthy of blogging at this stage, especially while there is still one iota of self-respect remaining that I have yet to destroy with a night of end-of-season-break flavoured frivolity.

Oh, and well done to everyone who raced Kona. Big respect!